Chicago’s Booming Geothermal Market | ACHR News

Though digging geothermal wells in high-density urban environments poses many challenges, in the Chicago, Illinois, the geothermal project market is booming. Local geothermal contractors along with manufacturers are reporting increased interest from businesses, the owners of multifamily buildings, and institutions like schools, governments, and museums. According to Tim Litton, director of marketing and communications at WaterFurnace, the installs of geothermal systems are a mix of new builds and retrofits. Geothermal systems have proved their energy savings that, over time, can reduce the system’s overall costs. Additionally, recently enhanced federal tax incentives have made geothermal systems more affordable, attributing to the boom – expanding all the way to tax-exempt entities, local governments or nonprofits or school districts can take advantage of certain geothermal incentives, through what the Internal Revenue Service calls “elective pay,” or “direct pay.” President at GEO, Ryan Dougherty, estimates that in some places when combining federal, local, and utility incentives, up to 65% of the upfront cost of a geothermal installed can be covered. Thus, a boom. According to Scott Adelsbach, owner of Chicagoland Geothermal, a contracting company that exclusively works in geothermal, the geothermal market is “actually pretty extraordinary.”

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